With a new disruptive performance, Fossil Free Culture NL (FFCNL) is once again calling out the Groninger Museum (GM) for its ongoing complicity in the social and ecological harm caused by the fossil gas industry.
While nearly every major cultural institution in the Netherlands has stepped away from fossil sponsorship, the GM continues to stand alone: uncritically promoting fossil gas companies and amplifying their misleading sustainability narratives. In doing so, the museum exposes its real position: claiming to look toward the future while remaining firmly anchored in its fossil past.
Industry experts like Michael Barnard have long pointed out that the “green hydrogen revolution” promised by gas companies exists largely on paper. Nowhere in the world has it materialised at scale, despite billions in public subsidies. The reason is simple: truly renewable hydrogen isn’t profitable for the fossil industry. The rush to build hydrogen infrastructure is, instead, a way to secure a future market for fossil-based hydrogen in a rapidly changing energy landscape.
Companies like GasTerra and Gasunie have shown time and again what they are: fossil fuel companies prioritising profit over people. Their legacy is written into the soil of Groningen, where gasquakes continue to damage homes and lives. Only weeks ago, another major quake hit the region.
Pictures by Anisa Xhomaqi
As FFCNL spokesperson Maria Rietbergen puts it:
“These companies make lofty promises about green hydrogen and whatnot, but it’s all a distraction from the serious harm they already have and continue to cause the region. Is the latest gasquake in Zeerijp not enough? Has the museum no shame continuing to artwash these companies?”
Our new performance takes its cue from the museum’s own exhibition theme, “It’s About Time.” In it, a group of performers repeatedly attempts to pass through a door. They block each other, again and again. From the outside, it looks as if everyone wants to move, and yet no one moves at all, no matter how easy it would be.
This image mirrors the Groninger Museum itself: claiming a future focus, but stuck in its fossil past. Unable to break away from its false friends, the museum keeps itself from moving forward.
Pictures by Jedidja Smalbil
We believe the GM’s refusal to cut ties with the fossil gas industry is not a bureaucratic delay — it is a moral failure.
FFCNL, long-standing allies of the cultural sector, continues to call for the end of oil and gas sponsorship in public cultural institutions across the Netherlands and for the terminal erosion of the fossil industry’s social license worldwide.
After successful campaigns at the Van Gogh Museum, NEMO, and the Concertgebouw, a collective of Groninger artists and activists has come together to focus their efforts on the Groninger Museum — the last one still holding on.
It’s time [seriously] to break up with gas.